Soul Resin

Rating:
Summary: A cross-genre novel: literary horror
Review: C. W. Cannon sets up an intriguing premise in SOUL RESIN, his first and ambitious novel. A disaffected college dropout, Mills Loomis Mills, develops the ability to hear bleeding, even from a distance, and to sense death. This "talent" intensifies after the brutal murder of his girlfriend April. He finds himself visited by a headless man who speaks of soul resin, a mysteriously powerful material derived from the aged and undisturbed of a murder victim. Once unambitious, Mills is now obsessed with activating the special properties of soul resin. Meanwhile, Mills's former history professor, Rafe Vidrine, has been contacted by a long-dead New Orleans woman, Jessamine, who wants Mills's search for soul resin halted. Cannon switches with adroitness between the voices of these characters and a few others, including (pseudo)historical accounts, lending a multi-layered texture to the novel. The themes revolve around the history of race relations and politics in New Orleans and their implications for residents of the present day, as well as the question of delineating between dead and alive, past and present.

Slow to begin and even slower to clarify itself, SOUL RESIN eventually reaches a level of tension that drives the book inexorably towards its conclusion. At times, voices merge, then diverge, demanding concentration on the part of the reader. By the end, every technical choice Cannon makes becomes clear. My main complaint with the book is the author's occasional tendency to dip too far into his esoteric theories of the dead. Because of this, the ending itself emerges as too finely constructed, too forced around the author's intent, to be fully satisfying. However, the meat of the novel is excellent - bloody decay presented in a startlingly original manner. Ghosts have past lives and agendas, some stronger than those of the living, and the "real" characters seem at their mercy. Once readers get into this story, they won't be able to put it down.

I don't recommend this book for casual readers and those hungry for Stephen King-like horror. SOUL RESIN is an intellectually challenging book that is electrified with a sensationalist plot. Serious readers, especially those who admire experimental works, will enjoy their introduction to this fine writer.

Rating:
Summary: A cross-genre novel: literary horror
Review: C. W. Cannon sets up an intriguing premise in SOUL RESIN, his first and ambitious novel. A disaffected college dropout, Mills Loomis Mills, develops the ability to hear bleeding, even from a distance, and to sense death. This "talent" intensifies after the brutal murder of his girlfriend April. He finds himself visited by a headless man who speaks of soul resin, a mysteriously powerful material derived from the aged and undisturbed of a murder victim. Once unambitious, Mills is now obsessed with activating the special properties of soul resin. Meanwhile, Mills's former history professor, Rafe Vidrine, has been contacted by a long-dead New Orleans woman, Jessamine, who wants Mills's search for soul resin halted. Cannon switches with adroitness between the voices of these characters and a few others, including (pseudo)historical accounts, lending a multi-layered texture to the novel. The themes revolve around the history of race relations and politics in New Orleans and their implications for residents of the present day, as well as the question of delineating between dead and alive, past and present.

Slow to begin and even slower to clarify itself, SOUL RESIN eventually reaches a level of tension that drives the book inexorably towards its conclusion. At times, voices merge, then diverge, demanding concentration on the part of the reader. By the end, every technical choice Cannon makes becomes clear. My main complaint with the book is the author's occasional tendency to dip too far into his esoteric theories of the dead. Because of this, the ending itself emerges as too finely constructed, too forced around the author's intent, to be fully satisfying. However, the meat of the novel is excellent - bloody decay presented in a startlingly original manner. Ghosts have past lives and agendas, some stronger than those of the living, and the "real" characters seem at their mercy. Once readers get into this story, they won't be able to put it down.

I don't recommend this book for casual readers and those hungry for Stephen King-like horror. SOUL RESIN is an intellectually challenging book that is electrified with a sensationalist plot. Serious readers, especially those who admire experimental works, will enjoy their introduction to this fine writer.

Rating:
Summary: A Must Read
Review: I was compelled to write a review after reading another review of this book at this site. I think the previous reviewer missed some of the point of this extraordinary novel. It may have failed if you are just looking for junk-food horror, but this novel is so much more. More Faulkner than King. It takes the best of historical fiction, ghost story, and New Orleans and cooks it up into one of the best books I've read all year. Jesamine is one of my all time favorite female characters. As to horror, I was scared to read this book at night, alone in my house. I live in an amazing city. This novel taps into something true about New Orleans. If you love this city you can't help but love this novel. This is the kind of book that you would love to see as a movie, but your afraid some director would mess it up.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but wholly unsucessful
Review: There is much to like about this book. Cannon's technical achievement of shifting through multiple voices (four point of view characters along with newspaper and historical articles) is impressive, as are a few of the ideas he plays with. While effective, this technique could prove difficult and confusing for some readers.

Essentially, Mills Loomis Mills, a college history student dropout, plays with supernatural forces that he believes will bring about overall good and understanding. The reader quickly learns that Mills may be incorrect, that he may in fact cause irrepairable damage to both the supernatural and real worlds. Cannon also presents many interesting bits of culture and history of New Orleans that those outside the south may not be aware of.

Unfortunately, it reads in many ways like a novella an agent or publisher pushed into a novel length work. The first 150 pages are primarily setup, and could be easily condensed into half the length. The story does not really take off until that point, when a history professor in contact with the spirit world confronts Mills with another side of thinking. The final climax, although a little predictable, does work well but could have been punched up a bit more by laying out a sense of more lasting effects.

Cannon's primary focus seems to have been the fine tuning of the voices and poetry of his words at the detriment of the overall plot, arc and ideas within the work as a whole. While I applaud Cannon for attempting to play with the ghost/horror/dark fantasy story, there is much he could have learned by emulating some of the ideas of less experimental writers like Constantine, Brite or (dare I say it) King.